Joseph Oughourlian: “Credible traditional media will become relevant again in a world full of fake news and AI-generated content”
The chairman of the Prisa Group believes that “people will return to trusted news outlets in a world where more than half of internet content is produced by robots.”
The outlook for the media is bleak—something that ceased to be news long ago, except in everything related to the relentless transformation affecting global orders and directly impacting organizations dedicated to disseminating quality information. The only certainty is that the time available to react and survive amid change is becoming increasingly shorter. It is precisely within this whirlwind of uncertainty that trust emerges as a rising value for media organizations.
This is the view of Joseph Oughourlian, chairman of the Prisa Group (publisher of EL PAÍS): “More than half of the content on the internet is produced by robots. In such a world, I believe and hope that people will return to trusted news brands. I can no longer trust social media. I trust brands that have journalists behind them checking the information. Ironically, credible traditional media will become relevant again in a world full of fake news and content generated by artificial intelligence.”
The Prisa chairman reflected this Tuesday in Abu Dhabi on the challenges facing the media industry during a debate alongside former UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden and John Darsie, CEO of fintech company Salt. The forum hosting these discussions on the future of media and entertainment is the Bridge Summit, held in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which EL PAÍS attended at the invitation of the organizers.
Presentations during the second day of the event focused on the viability of an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem. The prescriptions offered by industry experts converged around a single idea: strengthening trust. “I don’t see why the values of traditional media should not apply to new media,” Oughourlian said. He added: “The problem with social media is that they treat news like any other entertainment product. But they are nothing of the sort. News is fundamental to the functioning of democracies. And lies are a problem for democracy.”
Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden expanded on this point by highlighting the speed at which falsehoods can now spread around the world: “In the face of bot farms based in Asia and North Korea designed to undermine Western democracies, governments must take action.” Despite the boost that generative artificial intelligence gives to disinformation and its role in hybrid warfare between nations, Dowden argued that this technology—if properly trained—will help drive the “industry of lies” out of the increasingly atomized media ecosystem. “I trust that in a few years artificial intelligence will be used to establish conditions of well-being,” he said.
With the spread of falsehoods as one of the contemporary afflictions of democracies, the Prisa chairman added that regulations “are in place, but have not been enforced.” He recalled that European regulations such as the Digital Services Act and the European Media Freedom Act—binding on EU member states—“are not being reinforced by national parliaments.” Oughourlian also outlined his vision of Prisa’s core markets, Spain and Latin America, where “governments are more focused on who owns the media than on what is happening within the social media ecosystem.”
The Prisa chairman also pointed to global developments such as the looming battle between Netflix and Paramount over the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and its various subsidiaries—one of the major contemporary milestones in the U.S. economy, politics, and media industry—as evidence that “there is still a great deal of interest in traditional media.”
Another debate featured Andrew Sollinger, CEO of the prestigious global affairs magazine Foreign Policy. For Sollinger, who leads a publication focused on analysis and long-form storytelling, it is essential in an increasingly turbulent era to defend basic values such as “providing different perspectives on the same issue and letting readers judge for themselves.” He added: “Trust is an essential element. Some organizations have overlooked that value. And it must serve as the engine of credibility for news outlets, or people will not know what to trust in the future.”
Near the close of the day, Associated Press Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace echoed the ongoing conflict between her news agency and Donald Trump, stemming from AP’s refusal to adopt terminology imposed by the U.S. government regarding the Gulf of Mexico in its reporting. The decision led to AP journalists being barred from White House briefings, and the courts will ultimately decide yet another clash between journalism and power.
Julie Pace stood firm: “We are a global news agency and we make language decisions based on what is best for the audiences of our reporting. This retaliation constitutes a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects both freedom of expression and freedom of the press.” On the reason for continuing to fight for the truth above all else, she concluded: “If they can go after an organization like Associated Press, they can do it to any media outlet and to any citizen for the words they use.”
Source: elpais.com
Author: Quino Petit
Picture from Freepik